Mass Effect Andromeda critical round up: what does the world think?

Mass Effect Andromeda's review embargo has passed, and the collective minds of the internet have had their say. Safe to say opinions are mixed with a 'well, it could be worse' kind of vibe hanging about the place. But don't take my word for it, let's have a little tour around and see what everyone's thinking.

"The lion's share of Andromeda's missions are busywork - go to a waypoint, scan 10 Remnant collapsible shelving units, scoop up five mineral deposits for some lazy boffin back on the Nexus, blow up three raider outposts, and so forth. The game's partiality for such insipid fare is made all the worse by some needless toing-and-froing - this is a universe with FTL communications and cranial AI implants, but you can't check your email, pick a weapon prototype to research or take a vidcall without heading home to the Tempest. More aggravating still is the act of travelling between planets and solar systems, a janky, unskippable 20 second cinematic which feels like some animator's pet project that nobody had the heart to erase."

"You have plenty of romance options for either gender, including same-sex and interspecies, and when you’ve gone out of your way to talk to them and run errands for them (which often involve blowing up robots or killing outlaws) to kindle the flames of your budding relationship, you’re treated to a full-on R-rated sex scene the likes of which the Mass Effect series has never seen before. My wife’s reaction as I sealed the deal with human biotic commando Cora was to state, matter-of-factly, that, “This is porn. And it looks weird.” She’s not wrong – especially since male Ryder appears to have painstakingly removed every hair on his body below the neck – but I’d call it tasteful porn thanks to the context of the conversations leading up to it."

"The inventory system is still a disaster, with dozens weapons and armour with additional tiers, along with modifications. Each can be found, bought or crafted, but crafting takes research and development separately, which require different resources...

Does this sound like a mess? Because it’s a total goddamned mess. This isn’t helped by a UI that feels poorly equipped for the task, along with some truly confusing design decisions. For example, you can’t change gear unless you’re at a loadout station, which means no equipping that new sniper rifle or changing weapons until you’re no longer in a mission. Flipping between ability profiles requires pausing the game, picking the profiles option and making a selection, which is an awful lot of menus down for something you’ll probably want to do in the heat of the moment. You can also only have three abilities equipped at a time, and changing them once again requires digging into a menu. This all sucks. It’s cumbersome and slow, and discourages the use of gameplay elements given fairly prominent placement."

"Unfortunately, there's a dark cloud hanging over all of this: technical issues. Sure, the facial animations really don't look great, but the problems run deeper. On PS4, the framerate was all over the place both in and out of action. On both PS4 and PC, I encountered several audio issues, most notably multiple lines of dialogue playing at the same time, covering each other. I also saw other random glitches like characters that failed to load during conversations, exiting a conversation to find myself a room away from where I was previously, and enemies that fell into the level geometry. None of these issues rendered the game unplayable, but they were noticeable and pervasive."

"The other unavoidable issue is animation. The original games' lip sync was far from perfect, but it averaged out at acceptable. Andromeda is sometimes better but frequently worse, and the funny thing about animation is that you only really pay attention to it when something goes wrong. There are complex cutscenes here that wouldn't have been possible in a prior Mass Effect game, but there are also too many instances when somebody spends a dramatic moment gurning like a Taser victim. After a while I found myself noticing less and less, but it's very apparent early on and that can make an already-slow start harder to connect with."

So there you go. Defintely a range of opinions there with the overall opinion being that it's an okay game with a lot of issues and odd choices. You can read our Mass Effect Andromeda review, and there will be plenty more on the way starting with these Mass Effect Andromeda tips.